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Over the air conditioner, she hears, unmistakable, the bleating of a siren.

Ralph’s children had believed Christine was just after his money.

I arrived that evening barefoot and swathed in a sort of striped toga.

Lynn Freed reads from her collection, The Curse of the Appropriate Man.

Each time he retells that morning my dad forgets I was there too.

He was shirtless and showcasing a large tattoo of the Twin Towers.

“Your mother’s fine,” Giuseppe said. “We’re all completely fine.”

Third Place

Salve, salve, Regina. As the song ends, he folds into the fabric seat.

It’s a girls’ college we’re going to, but all the guys know Polly’s name.

It doesn’t matter who he is. I don’t think about him much anymore.

I watched to see how the others lived, not knowing I was the Other.

My wife had time to form a thought: I have killed my daughter.

Dining at Bocuse wasn’t about food, but about pleasure in all its forms.

In all the faded retellings of that night, there’s a lot he left out.

Then came “the sea of trouble” as he crumpled his bank statement.

Cruelty is cruelty and you don’t ask why, you just hit first and hit hard.

The future of the book began to appear among imaginary woods.

What were the unsafe things to say even in a thirty-year marriage?

Though I’ve never killed anything myself, I’ve been complicit.

In my sister’s memory, an old woman chased after the oranges.

It suddenly seemed to her that the world was filled with little miracles. There were moments when love overcame her despair.

Ten years ago, when I was in college, my father divorced my mother and said he wanted me to become responsible for her. That is why I fled to Italy.

Anchored off Biscayne Bay my father’s wooden skiff swings easy.

Dad was blind until six months ago, when he bumped his head in the fire.

Here’s the world, sweetheart. One word as small & large as a father.

Nothing stills, nothing stops. The world is still as it was before.

This is all there is. Nothing else. No heaven and no hell, okay?

She unhooks the sapphire pendant from its stand. Slips it into her pocket.

How many gods do you believe in? How many good men?